Chapter 5 - The Wrath of Moretti
The downpour had turned into a torrential storm by the time my convoy tore south along the Dan Ryan Expressway.
Four black SUVs ran three abreast through the blinding sheets of water, their emergency flashers cutting strobing orange wounds into the darkness. We didn't slow for tolls. We didn't slow for traffic. Chicago police cruisers, alerted by their dispatchers that Moretti vehicles were moving in force, pulled onto the shoulders and turned off their lights. When the Outfit went to total war, the city stepped aside.
Inside the lead vehicle, I checked the tactical feed on Marco’s tablet.
The Calumet safehouse had gone dark six minutes ago. The external telemetry lines had been severed, and the backup radio relay was dead.
“They cut the main grid and hit the external ventilation shafts with thermal charges,” Marco said, his voice tight as he racked the bolt of an M4 carbine in the front passenger seat. “The bunker’s emergency generator will have kicked in, but the halon system Elena had access to only covers the secondary corridor. If they brought heavy breaching gear, they’ll chew through the outer blast door in under ten minutes.”
“Faster,” I told the driver.
The speedometer needle trembled past one hundred and ten miles per hour. The engine of the supercharged Suburban screamed in protest against the drag of the rain.
I closed my eyes for three seconds. In the darkness behind my eyelids, I didn't see the blood I had spilled today. I saw Mateo’s fierce hazel eyes. I saw Lucas drawing his maps. I saw Leo taking apart the remote control, and Dante curled up like a kitten beneath the wool blanket.
*Mama said castles are made of cold stone so the bad things can’t get inside.*
Sofia had spent her last breaths giving them life in a freezing cabin in Oregon. She had sacrificed her husband, her comfort, and her sanity so that they might live. I had failed to protect her.
I would tear the world into pieces before I failed them.
“Two minutes out!” the driver shouted, swerving hard off the expressway exit ramp onto the cracked asphalt of the Calumet industrial corridor.
Ahead of us, the rusted skeleton of the abandoned shipping warehouse loomed against the lightning-streaked sky. Three unmarked tactical vans were parked near the open loading docks, their hazard lights blinking in the rain. Beside them stood four men in gray combat fatigues, setting up an external perimeter with squad automatic weapons.
“Ram the gate!” I ordered.
Our reinforced front bumper tore through the chain-link fence without slowing.
The mercenaries on the loading dock barely had time to raise their rifles before our convoy opened fire through the windshields. The heavy lead slugs chewed through the sheet metal of the warehouse, dropping two of the guards instantly. The remaining two scrambled for cover behind the shipping containers, returning fire with frantic bursts that spider-webbed our ballistic glass.
Our SUV didn't stop. It plowed straight up the concrete ramp, smashing through the warehouse’s corrugated metal doors and sliding to a halt in the cavernous interior.
I kicked my door open before the vehicle had fully stopped.
I carried no tactical shotgun this time. I carried a suppressed MP5 and my father’s nickel-plated Colt Python .357 revolver.
The warehouse interior was a kill zone. Steam rose from broken pipes, mingling with the acrid smoke of burnt cordite. To our right, three mercenaries were retreating toward the subterranean hatch that led to the underground bunker.
I raised the MP5. Three controlled, two-round bursts. Three bodies hit the oily concrete, their weapons clattering away into the dark.
“Marco! Secure the exits! Kill anything that wears a uniform!”
“On it! Team two, with me!”
I didn't wait for them. I sprinted toward the open hatch in the floor.
The heavy steel trapdoor had been blasted inward with a shaped linear charge. The stench of high-explosive residue stung my eyes and throat. Below, down the iron spiral staircase, the red emergency lighting of the bunker cast long, bloody shadows across the concrete walls.
Gunfire echoed from the depths.
Not the rhythmic chatter of military rifles.
The sharp, desperate crack of a small-caliber handgun.
*Dr. Torres’s emergency pistol.* I had left a .380 Walther PPK in the medicine cabinet for Elena.
I threw myself down the iron stairs, taking them four at a time.
At the bottom of the staircase, the main corridor was choked with white smoke from a discharged fire extinguisher. Two mercenaries lay face down on the concrete, their tactical vests shredded by shotgun pellets—the defensive tripwires I had rigged along the baseboards had done their job.
At the far end of the hallway, the reinforced blast door to the living quarters was half-open, scorched by a thermal lance.
Inside, a man in black gear was shouting in pain.
I rounded the corner like an avenging demon.
Inside the room, the scene tore my heart open and set it ablaze.
Elena was on the floor, bleeding from a gash across her forehead, her fingers clawing at the boot of a massive mercenary who was trying to pin her down.
Behind her, pressed into the narrow gap between the bunks and the concrete wall, were my four sons.
Mateo stood in front.
The four-year-old child was holding Dr. Torres’s stainless-steel medical shears with both hands, his knuckles bone-white, his teeth bared in a feral snarl. He was shaking from head to foot, but his feet were planted wide. Behind him, Lucas was clutching a heavy iron bedside lamp, ready to swing, while Dante and Leo clung to each other’s shirts, their faces buried in each other’s shoulders.
The mercenary had his sidearm drawn, aiming it down at Elena’s head.
“Drop the scissors, you little rat, or I blow her head off!” the man barked.
I stepped through the shattered doorway.
I didn't speak. I didn't issue a warning.
I brought the Colt Python up with one hand and pulled the heavy double-action trigger.
The .357 magnum roared in the enclosed concrete space, a deafening thunderclap that drowned out the storm above.
The heavy hollow-point round took the mercenary in the side of the helmet, snapping his head sideways and dropping him instantly to the floor like an empty sack of wet sand.
Silence descended upon the room, absolute and ringing.
The smoke curled slowly toward the ceiling exhaust.
I lowered the revolver. My ears were ringing, my hands coated in soot and rainwater, my tailored suit soaked through and ruined.
Elena let out a ragged, sob-choked gasp and collapsed against the floor, her hands reaching out toward the boys.
Mateo didn't drop the shears. He kept them raised, his chest heaving in rapid, terrified gasps. His hazel eyes darted from the dead man on the floor, up the length of my bloody coat, and finally locked onto my face.
The fury that had carried me across the city evaporated, leaving only a vast, terrifying tenderness that brought me to my knees.
I dropped the gun. It hit the concrete with a heavy clatter, well out of reach.
I opened my arms.
“Mateo,” I whispered, my voice breaking for the first time in my adult life. “The thunder is gone.”
The boy’s lower lip began to tremble. The stainless-steel shears slipped from his fingers, clinking against the tile floor.
He didn't run like a soldier. He ran like a child.
He threw himself across the floor, crashing against my chest with all the small strength in his body. His little arms wrapped around my neck, his fingers burying themselves in the collar of my wet coat, his face pressing tight against the hollow of my throat.
A heartbeat later, Lucas was there, wrapping his arms around my waist. Then Leo, crying softly, clutching my sleeve. And finally Dante, the quiet one, who climbed into my lap and burrowed his face into my chest, his small body shaking with aftershocks of terror.
I pulled them all against me. I wrapped my wide arms around all four of them, burying my face in their dark hair. They smelled of cheap soap, wool blankets, and Sofia’s lavender lotion.
“I have you,” I choked out, tears finally burning down my cheeks, washing away the blood and the ash. “I have you. Nobody will ever touch you again. I swear it on your mother’s soul.”
Behind me, Marco stepped into the doorway, his rifle lowered. He took in the scene—the dead mercenary, the weeping housekeeper, and the most feared mafia don in the Midwest kneeling in the dirt, clutching four little boys against his heart.
May you like
Marco swallowed hard, blinked back his own tears, and slowly pulled the blast door shut, leaving us alone in the quiet warmth of the underground dark.
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